Google asks decide to dismiss Justice Department’s lawsuit claiming digital-ad monopoly

“In the more than three years that it has been investigating Google’s ad tech business, the United States has received more than 2 million documents from Google and taken over 30 depositions of Google witnesses,” the tech big mentioned in a courtroom submitting. “Yet plaintiffs remain unable to find support for their claimed antitrust harms.”

In one instance, Google mentioned that whereas the federal government claims its advert tech enterprise controls “more than 50%” of the market, 70% is required to show a monopoly.

Google didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The Justice Department sued Google in January, alleging its dominant digital-advertising enterprise was a monopoly and calling for its ad-tech enterprise to be damaged up. The lawsuit included eight states as plaintiffs, together with California, New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

“Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the DOJ alleged in its criticism.

Google maintains that it’s not a monopoly, and faces stiff competitors from Facebook mother or father Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
-1.54%,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
-0.09%,
Comcast Corp.
CMCSA,
+1.34%
and others.

The lawsuit is the second federal antitrust criticism in opposition to Google. In 2020, the Justice Department sued Google for an alleged monopoly in search. The case is scheduled to go to trial in September.

Alphabet shares have gained about 16% yr to this point, however are down about 27% over the previous 12 months, in comparison with the S&P 500’s
SPX,
+0.16%
3.6% acquire in 2023 and 13% decline over the previous yr.

MarketWatch reported Jon Swartz contributed to this report.